Ap

The ap, also spelled ahp, aap or arp, is a Cambodian spirit: a woman whose head and organs leave her body at night to look for food. It is the Khmer relative of the Thai krasue.

Wikipedia, in its krasue article, describes the ap of Cambodian folklore as, in most tellings, a woman who is part spirit and part mortal. By day she looks like anyone else. At night her head rises out of her body with her organs hanging from it and goes in search of food. Ap are believed to eat foul things, among them blood, raw meat, village livestock, corpses, feces, placentas and newborns, and to be kept off by thorns and guard dogs. The same article derives the name from a Sanskrit word meaning to make someone suffer.

The Bangkok Post, in 2016, set the ahp of Cambodia beside the krasue of Thailand, the penanggalan of Malaysia and the palasik of Indonesia. Somrit Luechai, speaking to The People, says ghosts have no copyright and no nationality: the krasue is found in Thailand, among the Khmer and in Malaysia, a belief handed down and embellished until it became a ghost the region shares.

My Mother Is Arb, or Kon Aeuy Madai Ahp, drew on the Cambodian myth of a spirit that is a woman's head trailing bloody entrails, with no body, and Wikipedia says the effect was made with pig's entrails glued onto a doll's head. In 2006 the Taipei Times described Nieng Arp, or Lady Vampire, shown at a recent Cambodian festival, in which a woman's head flew with its organs dangling as it chased a frightened couple through the dark.